


Four of a Kind

by jesse_panic



Category: Silent Hill
Genre: 4th Grade, Best Friends, Cute, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Shepherd's Glen, Tree-climbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-08
Updated: 2012-05-08
Packaged: 2017-11-05 00:50:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/400072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesse_panic/pseuds/jesse_panic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joey may have just got Alex's old Frisbee stuck in a tree, but Josh won't ask his brother for help because he took it without permission. As they try (and fail) to get it down, a solitary classmate plucks up the courage to give them a hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four of a Kind

**Author's Note:**

> The children in Silent Hill: Homecoming are probably my favourite thing about the game, partly because of the rich level of detail in their designs and notes which reveals their surprisingly well-rounded personalities. I really wanted to see more of them as normal kids! Anyway, some notes:
> 
> \- 'Noh' is Nora Holloway's nickname. It is headcanon on my part that she really hated her old-fashioned birthname so is known as Noh by her friends.
> 
> \- Noh attends school band practice because of an unused Note for her which is on the SH wiki. It's a diary entry by her explaining that she made first flute but her parents didn't seem proud of her at all.
> 
> \- All the kids are 9/10ish here, setting this before the events of Homecoming. It is also slightly AUish, as the girls are roughly the same age as the boys as opposed to being in their early teens as they supposedly are in the game (though I think that age gap was only introduced by the developers to allow them to give the girls' monster forms more 'adult' designs.)

“Well, Alex is going to kill me.”

 

“Yep.” The two boys stared into the tree for a while longer, eyes hungrily fixed on the bright yellow Frisbee snagged on it. Joey looked down at his shoes for a moment, and then back at Josh. “… Sorry.”

 

Josh scowled back. “Damn it!... Alex doesn’t even know I snuck it to school today: he’s gonna be so mad when he finds out. Why did you have to go and throw it so high?!”

 

Joey raised his palms in defence. “Hey, it was an accident! And, maybe Alex won’t be mad, I dunno: your brother’s pretty cool, Josh.”

 

Josh shifted his feet awkwardly. “Well, yeah, I guess… but he’s gonna come collect me this afternoon and see it in the tree. If I had just asked for it I don’t think he’d be mad, but… he has this thing about lying…”

 

They settled into guilty silence for a while, until Joey’s waveringly optimistic voice sounded another suggestion, his neck smarting in contrition for getting his best friend into trouble. “Maybe if Noh gets out of School Band practice early she could help.”

 

Josh raised an eyebrow sceptically. “She’s worse at climbing trees than I am.” This was true: Noh Holloway could scale a chain-link fence in seconds but froze up when faced with a tree without a rope ladder.

 

“Well, yeah,” said Joey quickly, “but she’s got her flute. If it’s in the case she could stand on my shoulders and use it to sort-of poke the Frisbee off the branch…”

 

Josh did not like this plan, and it showed on his face. “I don’t think you guys’d be tall enough. Also, what happens if she falls, or breaks the flute?”

 

Their eyes naturally slid to the schoolyard concrete. “Then we’d all get yelled at.” Joey breathed, the image of the time Judge Holloway had caught the three of them taking turns rolling in a tire down the road still fresh in his mind.

 

The three of them. Josh and Joey and Noh. The founders’ kids. They were beyond lucky that they got along, for not only did they get lumped together in church and at town festivals, but for whatever reason the other kids in Shepherd’s Glen tended to give them a wide birth: not that this bothered them any. Josh and Joey had been thick as thieves from their first meeting aged three. Theirs was a friendship borne out of complementary interests: Josh loved insects, and Joey loved climbing trees and digging holes and therefore unearthed many fresh specimens in his wake. Since that first dirt-filled day they had seldom left each other’s side. Noh was a bit different; she was quiet, confined and loved reading more than either of the boys. Her mother always kept her busy with band practice, debate society, the junior paper, yearbook and whatever else she could make her join to keep her off her hands or playing with the other kids. In spite of this, she was bubbly and friendly, and generally liked to get in on whatever they were doing. Her quietness belied a thirst for adventure fed on the books she voraciously devoured in her spare moments, so any make-believe games they played were always better with her at the helm.

 

However, their small friendship group had its downsides, one such being that they seldom had someone else to turn to when faced with the everyday crises of the playground. A small group of unusual children was an easy target for bullies, and although threatening the presence of older siblings worked sometimes, once Alex and Elle had graduated from Middle School they were too far away to help and the other kids knew it. Additionally, they could not rally their siblings to get the Frisbee out of the tree. Josh and Joey’s options for help were limited and they knew it. Neither they nor Noh could get it out of the tree unaided (much to Joey’s frustration as he loved climbing but was simply too short to reach the good boughs of this particular oak), asking Alex or Elle was out of the question as they’d get angry, and whilst the janitor could probably knock it out with a broom he was too creepy to consider asking in the first place.

 

They had been staring blankly at the tree considering their options when they heard the swish of fabric behind them. Turning, they saw a familiar face. Scarlet Fitch stood watching them at a slight distance, her long cola-brown hair pushed off her face with an Alice band, her feet twisting in heelless pumps. She was the other girl, the one who had never quite fit into their group. Josh thought she was boring, and Joey thought she was too girly- always playing with dolls or reading about ballerinas- and she never joined any school clubs so Noh barely knew her. If she hadn’t been Dr Fitch’s daughter Josh doubted that he would even know who she was, she was such a solitary child. Every recess, she would wonder off into the corner of the yard and stay there, pacing or sitting or running by herself. Josh had passed close by her once, and heard her muttering aloud, saying something about “Ruth”. There was no-one called Ruth in their school. The only other times he became aware of her was when the larger kids singled her out over his group. He remembered once seeing a pack of them start to close in on her little area by the stucco wall, slowly cutting off her escape routes. As soon as she had noticed them, she seemed to spring to life, gathering up her bag and half-vaulting over one of the smaller kids to get away. He remembered seeing the corner of her dress whip round the side of the building and out of sight. The bullies gave chase of course, but returned some five minutes later unsatisfied. Despite her tall, lanky frame and the fact that her endless supply of sick notes meant she never did gym, she could clearly move. Josh had grinned to himself: she may be boring but he hadn’t wanted to see her get hurt.

 

Now, she was standing by them, her eyes alternating between gazing at the Frisbee and boring into their own. “You lose your Frisbee?” she asked, in the same strident voice she used in class, as if she was forcing herself to speak.

 

“Yeah,” said Josh. “It’s my brother’s.”

 

She looked up at it again, placed her hands on her hips and nodded. “You want me to get it down?”

 

Josh was taken aback. They barely spoke outside of church rituals, and he didn’t think he’d ever extended a similar kindness to her. “Uh, yeah, okay.”

 

“You can do that?” Joey murmured incredulously. Tree-climbing was what Joey lived for, so to him the height of cool was someone who could skin up a tree without ladders, rope or even a boost.

 

But either she hadn’t heard him or she didn’t think it was a question worth answering, for Scarlet had already started walking towards the tree. As she passed the boys Josh was reminded of just how tall she really was, her slight frame making her easily one and a half heads taller than Joey. She got within three feet of the trunk and stopped. Then she crouched, swinging her arms behind her in a low arc, and leapt for the lowest bough of the tree in one swift movement. Her fingers caught the solid oak the first time, and seemed to lock in place, as she used her grip to swing herself back and forth until her pumps caught on the trunk. She walked up the side of the tree with ease, the skirt of her pale summer dress unfurling slightly to reveal her gym shorts underneath. She was clearly no stranger to climbing at school.

 

Once she had walked to the bough she was standing on, she did not stop and clumsily scramble up the other side of bough as most would, but instead barely paused for breath as she swung herself up and over the bough, unhooking her feet at just the right moment to flick them onto the top of the branch, landing in a feline crouch. From there, she tested her footing once, then stood at full height on her bough, allowing her to easily grab on to the offending Frisbee-trapping branch and pull herself up to it. When she stood up (slightly more hunched this time to accommodate for the more clustered branches), she crept along and unhooked the Frisbee with the same ease one would pick up a dropped baseball card from the sidewalk.

 

Upon reaching her goal she seemed to hesitate slightly, as if unsure how to get back down with the little yellow disk in tow.

 

“Throw it down to us, Scarlet!” Josh hollered up. She nodded once and carefully aimed it through the foliage, closing one eye in mock concentration. Josh missed it again but Joey caught it with both hands.

 

“I don’t think I do throw lousy: I think it must’ve been you.” Joey muttered, handing the Frisbee back to Josh. “’Cause she throws really straight and you still missed. You ever actually play with this with Alex?”

 

“Yeah!” Josh flushed defensively. It had only just occurred to him that Alex might have always just thrown it gently for him.

 

Throughout their talk, Scarlet had not moved from her foothold on the branch. She seemed to be staring at the ground.

 

“Hey, are you stuck?” Joey called, the concern in his voice almost tangible. He had clearly reconsidered his position on whether she was a girly girl or not.

 

Once again, Scarlet didn’t answer, or maybe she answered him with action. For at that moment, she dropped from the branch, catching herself clasping both of her hands on the branch’s furthest side. From there, she swung once, then let go again, clearing the twigs, the larger boughs, and part of the playground fence to land crouched on her feet in front of them.

 

She seemed uncertain how to respond to their open-mouthed gapes.

*

Two weeks later and the Sixth Graders were on the prowl again. They moved through the playground, hoping to spot social stragglers or even whole groups of misfits to entertain them. They didn’t even bother checking out the tree. They’d tried to get the tree kids before of course, but could never get a good enough purchase on it to actually make it up to their prize. All four of the tree’s inhabitants had had good fun with that of course, mockingly yelling encouragement to them. Which is why they gave up: because they were Fourth Graders and that was humiliating. So there they remained each recess, sitting and chatting quietly out of harm’s way. Nora Holloway on the lowest branches, sitting with a book on her lap and her head tilted up to her friends in the slightly higher branches. Joshua Shepherd sat on the branch above her facing the trunk, some bug or other cupped delicately in his hands. Next to him, Joseph Bartlett was perched, chatting enthusiastically with the girl on the top branch; Scarlet Fitch, who lay languidly on a single bough, her hand trailing lazily through the air, a crooked smile on her face.

**Author's Note:**

> \- Scarlet's "Ruth" is another aspect of canon from an unused Note found on the SH wiki. The Note is a letter Scarlet wrote to her imaginary friend Ruth. This, combined with Josh's summary on his photo of her, made me believe she was a very lonely child.
> 
> \- Scarlet's interest in ballet (which is partly responsible for her athletic ability) is entirely canon; her whole room is decorated with pictures of ballerinas as well as dolls. Also her boss form wears ballet shoes.


End file.
